November 29, 2011 - 11:57am
Pot Stickers
There is a blog on here about pot stickers. I'm looking for another type of pot sticker dough. It has cake flour and all purpose flour in them along with eggs, water and sea salt. Anybody have a recipe like these?? Thanks for helping me out. :) :)
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Cake flour + AP flour = pastry flour. You can purchase pastry flour, or make it with a blend, but I don't see any advantage to using pastry flour over AP flour for pot stickers. Of course, you will want to avoid high gluten (bread flour) or self rising/fast rising flour to ensure you get a decent result.
Just be sure to sift your flour, regardless of the type you use, and use hot water. Sifting the flour provides a more even hydration. I prefer to add the water in a more or less continuous stream or, at the least, in about three stages.
Do you have a good pot sticker recipe? I would LOVE TO HAVE IT! Can you post how you make them? I tried once with a recipe from Ming the "Blue Ginger" guy, it came out gross! The dough was "doughy" after frying, not like the frozen ones you get at Costco. Can you make those kind? I would love to know how if possible?
Thanks,
Faith
Ming Tsai is, IMO, pretty good at his craft.
If you're having trouble cooking your pot stickers this might help:
http://chinesefood.about.com/od/potstickers/p/potstickers.htm
As for a recipe:
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp corn starch
1 - 1 1/4 cups hot water (at least 120 degrees) I prefer boiling water but that can be difficult to work with. If the dough is too dry, add water about 2 tsp at a time. It should be slightly tacky but it shouldn't stick to your hands after it's rested.
1 egg white mixed with equal amount of water and beaten to combine well
Filling of your choice
Blend the flour and corn starch, bring water to temperature and add to the dry ingredients in a continuous stream while, at the same time, stirring with a large spoon to form a soft dough. Allow the dough to cool enough to handle comfortably. Lightly flour your preparation surface and knead the dough until it's smooth; about 5 - 8 minutes. Allow it to rest undisturbed for five minutes.
Divide the dough into segments and roll each segment into a log approximately 1 inch in diameter. Cut slices from the roll (about 1/2 - 5/8 inchs wide) and flatten each slice on the counter. Roll the slices into round disk shapes that are about 1/8 inch thick (they should be about 3 - 3 1/2 inches in diameter). This is an eyeball judgement. Too thick and the skins won't cook through, too thin and you run the risk of rupturing the skins when filling them or, if they stick to the pan, when moving them to a serving platter.
Put about a tablespoon of your filling on each skin and lift one edge over the top, using a bit of beaten egg white and water mixture (about 50/50 mix) on the edges. Use a pleating motion to seal the edges. Let the potstickers rest for about five more minutes before cooking.
Put a couple of tablespoons of oil in a non-stick pan and heat it. Pop them (be gentle) into a preheated pan and brown. When brown, add enough hot water to come up about half way on the sides and bring the water to a slow boil. Cover, but leave some of the top open so the steam can escape, and cook until the water is nearly evaporated. Remove the lid, drizzle some flavored oil (e.g. sesame oil) over the pot stickers and allow the water to evaporate entirely, check to see that the bottoms are brown and crisp, remove to serving platter.
You'll notice that I use an egg white/water mixture to seal the edges. That's simply my own style and it is not essential. If you can get a good seal by simply wetting the edges and pleating them by all means use that method.
Alternative: Steam them to cook the filling through, then move them to a pan of heated oil and fry to crisp both sides.
Oh yes, I love Ming, and I think he's way pro, I'm just not! ;) I have his "Blue Ginger" cookbook, it just didn't come out like he said? But thanks so much for all this information and for taking the time to write it all out! I totally apprecitate it! I will give it a try!!! ;)
Thanks so much!
Faith
You're welcome, Faith. I hope it works out for you. If you decide not to use the boiling water method you may find that the corn starch doesn't work as well, causing a somewhat gummey dough. If that happens, just omit the corn starch.
Sounds good! Went and looked in my BG book, he has the same boil the water method. I don’t know why it didn’t work? Maybe I’ll try to put the dough in the frig and then try and roll it out super thin? Just remember doing it last time and it was thickish and not very good? But probably my fault! ;)
Thanks for the helpful hints!
By far the most significant difference in various white flours is their "gluten" content. (There are other differences too, but you can get away with acting like they don't really matter.)
The gluten contents for one particular brand (King Arthur Flour) are:
Cake 8.0%
Pastry 9.2%
All Purpose 11.7%
Bread 12.7%
(There's no standard for these terms; different brands of flour may be a little different.)
You can generally make a flour with any gluten content you want by mixing other flours; some (persnickety?) recipes even specify the mix right in the recipe. (Mixing won't be exactly the same as getting the "right" flour from the mill, but it will be pretty "close". [The most controversy around mixing flours seems to surround making bagels.])
Items made with flour with too much gluten tend to be "toothy"; those made with flour with too little gluten tend to "fall apart". Each baking recipe has a preferred "just right" amount.
There's a fair amount of tolerance - being "off" by around 1.5% either way is usually okay. (Also note that -despite the name- "bread" flour is not needed for baking bread:-)
Could you maybe post a link to a photo of something similar to what your'e talking about? I've never heard of a potsticker dough made with cake flour, or one that has eggs in it.
I thought the dough used in pot sticker dumplings uses a type of hot water dough consisting of all-purpose flour and boiling water. You add boiling water to all-purpose flour and mix with a spoon. Allow the mixture to cool and knead. The hot temperature of the boiling water makes the dough more sturdy.
That's what works for me. Flour, perhaps a bit of corn starch, and salt to which boiling water is added to creat a dough. Nothing complicated, the flavor is in the fillilng and as long as the wrapper isn't gooey or otherwise unpalatable I don't see any reason to carry these little dumplings further into the gourmet arena.
back when I was in grad school doing my PhD in Chinese Lit, we used to have dumpling parties at my professor's house, where all of the grad students would get together and make literally hundreds of dumplings and then embark on an orgy of eating them boiled, steamed, fried and as potstickers -- accompainied of course by plenty of alcohol.
That boiling water + AP flour dough is what we used; the key is to knead the crap out of it so that it's smooth and elastic.
Stan
Here's a link that gives you a recipe for the dough and filling
http://chinesefood.about.com/od/potstickers/r/potstickers.htm
use a Mexican tortilla press to make my pot sticker dough into rounds that at near perfect too! Saves about a million heartaches and pain. I find rolling by far the hardest part for me. Living in the SW, tortilla presses are as much a necessity as any rolling pin :-) I use pot sticker dough or won ton dough for ravioli to. Just way easier for me.